Everything you need to know about the Middle East in this story about Moroccan journalists

Seven leading Moroccan journalists - five women and two men -  are currently in Israel, at the invitation of Israel's foreign ministry, to show them the Israeli viewpoint on issues.

YNet reports:

One of the delegation members from a prominent Moroccan newspaper explained the climate of fear and propaganda which has hitherto precluded the possibility of such a visit from coming to fruition.

In 2009, she said, she received an invitation to visit Israel as part of Euro-Mediterranean Youth Forum but felt pressured to decline the offer.

“I was extremely afraid of coming. We are under pressure from the Arab media, religious people and propaganda about the Palestinian issue,” the journalist confessed.

“People are scared to become outcasts. If you say you support Israel, or even that you don’t have a negative opinion about the country in regard to the Palestinian issue, they will single you out.”

...This time accepting the offer, she also described just how hazardous participating in such a trip can actually be.

“I didn’t tell most of my friends that I am coming here so that they wouldn’t ostracize me. As a country, Morocco has no problem with me coming to Israel. As a delegation we flew as usual from Casablanca. No one prevented us from doing so.” However, she noted that “my friends recommended that I don’t share anything on social media. ‘You will regret it for the rest of your life. They will incite against you and you will possibly even get death threats,’” they warned her.

The Forum for Palestinian Journalists reacted furiously to this story, saying "this ill-fated visit represents a stab in the back of our steadfast people and it is a new example of notorious "normalization", a big shock and disappointment."

Here is the current state of the Middle East in a nutshell:

- Arab leaders and intelligentsia are more and more interested in getting closer to Israel.
- Palestinian Arab opinions are being roundly ignored.
- Clueless Palestinians stubbornly hold on to their intransigence and hate.
- Palestinians refuse to see which way the wind is blowing so they continue to hold on to their intransigence even as moderate Arab states are telling them that they need to get their act together if they want to continue getting political and financial support.

People who really want peace, as opposed to cynically using the word "peace" as a cudgel against Israel, should really be pressuring the Palestinian leadership to stop their self-destructive policies.

But the number of true "pro-peace, pro-Palestinian" groups is vanishingly small. 

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